Welcome to my blog - Read and enjoy

Thank you for visiting my Scooby1970 blogspot. I update whenever I can and when I have something interesting to share. You will also find published work of mine at Gaming Illustrated. Gaming Illustrated is where most of my work now takes place, but I will transfer some of my more popular articles from there over to this blog, in extended format.

Enjoy the blogs, and relive my ups and downs in life, view some interesting reviews and just enjoy the site. If you are interested in learning something about some of my favourite music then click here it's the official Jan & Dean Site that has taken me and my friend from across the sea, June many years to keep updated.

:) Mark

Thursday, 23 June 2011

Ripping DVDs in Ubuntu 11.04

Ubuntu 11.04 and its variants such as Pinguy OS are great operating systems, and one of the things I thought I would miss from windows was the ability to rip DVDs. However, not only were my expectations met, they were exceeded with the quality of the software and the quality of the results.

I have used three separate programs to rip DVDs to my hard drive. I wanted to make a .AVI backups of a few DVDs with as little hassle as possible. The first program I tried was a program I had used on Windows, namely "DVDx 4". I downloaded the Linux distribution from the site and straight away upon loading realised that thankfully it was identical to the Windows version!

"DVDx 4" will rip any DVD, even if it is protected. You can choose the quality of the rip and the codecs it uses. You can also rip for iPod, PSP, Quicktime, 3GPP and of course Divx. On the highest quality rips the picture quality is excellent and can easily be re-ripped to DVD should you want to. The software is fast and reliable and sound keeps in sync, a problem that plagued my ripping using windows.

The second program I have used is called "OGMRip" and this also rips protected DVDs. The interface is much simpler on this one and at first glance it looks like a simplified version of other DVD ripping software. However, under the bonnet of "OGMRip" is a powerful ripping machine. You can rip to more formats than I have seen in any other ripping program, and the quality is a step up from "DVDx 4". It has various filters you can apply to make the picture better and it can rip to a specified storage amount or bitrate.

"OGMRip" is a killer app there's no doubt of that. However, it's simpler interface may put some people off. That said, because of the extra features it can be very slow... make that very very slow! Ideal if you need a HD rip, otherwise get under the bonnet and change those settings.

The third program I have used has been one of the most versatile and is called "DVD95 Converter". It seems to be the fastest ripping software I have used and has worked perfectly on all variants of Ubuntu. I know use Pinguy OS 11.04 since writing this review, and "DVD95" seems to be the most trouble free in that particular distro.

So, combined, "DVDx 4", "OGMRip" and "DVD95 Converter" are a lethal combination and a DVD copiers dream come true! The power of Linux just blows me away each day, and my next adventure will be into the world of Video Editing. Let's see what Linux can offer us then.